adCenter Broad Match Enhancement Released – What You Should Know!

adCenter has rolled out some enhancements to the Broad/Phrase Match algorithm as of early August. These enhancements are expected to drive increased click volume for all advertisers currently using Broad Match. We have received some specific information on expectations of the change from our Yahoo reps:

Broad Enhancement Launch Date

Enhanced Broad Match was rolled out between August 4 and August 8

Expected Results of Broad Enhancement

Increase in click volume for advertisers currently using Broad Match

Decrease in click volume for advertisers only using Exact and Phrase Match

Quality of clicks should remain consistent, if not improve

Expected Outcomes of adCenter’s Broad Enhancement

Ultimately impressions are expected to increase for Broad Match as Broad Match keywords will be matching to new, incremental queries. This will likely drive an increase in click volume and overall an increase in spend as a result.

In other cases, adCenter will choose better ads from the same advertiser, therefore in those instances impressions will stay relatively the same but click volume should go up

For those only opted into Phrase Match, you can expect impressions to decrease as Phrase is likely to lose impression and click volume due to these changes (An interesting note from our reps: “in many cases Broad will take the place of Phrase”)

We expect these new clicks generated to be of at least the same conversion quality of Broad Match currently (A second interesting note from our reps: “system-wide, conversion rates are 85% of Exact Match”)

Potential Action Items for Broad Match Enhancement

Consider Increase Budget Caps – A good rule of thumb would be to increase budget caps by at least 5% – 10% for campaigns currently maxing their budget allocation or within 20% of doing so.

Be Cautious of Broad Match Keywords Trumping Exact Match – If you have similar terms in multiple accounts, our Yahoo reps expect there to be some increased Broad Match trumping of Exact Match from one account to another.

What are your thoughts on the change? Personally, I think this is much needed as conversion performance tends to be higher across adCenter but volume has always been an issue for our clients. I’m looking forward to measuring performance after the change!